9 years of stories, results, and commentary from a former online poker pro making the rounds at Northern California card rooms

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

A Final Table Dud

When I saw the chip counts for the 10 handed final table of my $335 NLH event at the CSPC I confirmed that I was in second place. In fact with 95,700 I was only 4,000 off of first, but I was only 55,000 ahead of 10th - the chip stacks were very tight.

This was an incredibly boring final table. It took close to 3 hours for us to lose one player and that player was almost me! In the same amount of time the $335 Stud tournament from the day before that restarted at the same time we did played from 16 players to conclusion (the made a deal when they were down to 4).

I dribbled away my stack for the first two hours, getting no cards, finding no good spots to make a move, and finding myself with about 60,000 chips. Then I picked up QQ and got it all in vs KK who had 50,000.

After that hand I was down to 10,000 when I found a real miracle. The blinds were 2,000/4,000 with a 500 chip ante and I looked down at KJ. I moved all in sure that at least the big blind would call me. Instead I got called by the big blind and the small blind. The flop came down A 6 4 and the small blind moved all in! YUCK! I was sure I was against an ace.

In fact I was against A4. I needed either running KK, JJ or QT to win the hand. As the turn was coming out I said "Put a queen up there." BANG, a queen comes. "Put a Ten up there" I called out. BANG, a ten. I was up to 35,000 and while still in last, I was back in it.

I never made a full recovery, but we lost three players while I was hanging on for dear life. I finished 7th which paid $2,227 (at least I beat lollipop who finished 8th!). Not what I was hoping for at the start of yesterday's action, but still a great result for the tournament as a whole.

The winner got a trophy that was basically just a big ass grizzly bear. It wasn't huge, but it was pretty big and I swear it was made of solid iron and weighed at least 40 pounds. With all the tournaments I've won, I don't have any trophies, bracelets, rings, ribbons, plaques or anything. I want one of those bears!

Today it's HORSE time! Maybe if I win I'll get myself a similarly sized horse and have it riding the bear trophy!